Ok before I start just let me say this is my first long review of a game ever, hopefully what you take away from this review is a clear image of what Red Faction: Guerrilla is all about.

Right, now that that’s out of the way let’s begin.The story starts 50 years after the first two red faction games. The EDF (Earth Defence Force) have populated Mars and are running it like a dictatorship. You play a miner called Alec Mason, who until after the recent death of his father worked on earth. We first meet our character as he walks out from the space port to meet his brother.

Now that you have a basic grasp on the beginning of the story. I’m going to tell you how you proceed along the storyline. Ok, you have 6 main areas on your map, you have: Parker where you begin, and then you have Dust, Badlands, Oasis, The Free Fire Zone and finally EOS. These all vary in size and the EDF have a progressively higher hold on each section as you proceed through them, with the one exception, being The Free Fire Zone, where the EDF have a relatively small hold over the population of the area. Obviously Parker will have the smallest amount of EDF control and EOS, being the central command of the EDF, has the highest control of all of the areas. With in each of these areas you will have one or two safehouses. This will be where you can upgrade all of you weapons, change your weapons, as you can only carry four at the one time and the hammer is constantly there so you are really limited to three extra weapons, and you will also be able to refill your ammunitions with out paying for them, like in some games.

Alright now lets press on to what you can do in each level. With in each level there are two different sets of Morale, which can affect the outcome of a battle. There’s the EDF Morale, then there’s the Red Faction Morale. Obviously the Red Faction Morale will start lower than the EDF Morale, but these can be changed very easily. There are certain actions, called Guerrilla actions, which you can do to change the Morale for each side. These include Raid, where you essentially go and raid an EDF building and take it over or in most cases blow it to high hell. If you succeed in this action the EDF will lose Morale/control and the Red Faction will gain more Morale/control, which will help you later on as more Guerrilla’s will help you if you end up in a fire fight with the EDF. Next there’s Defend which is basically the opposite of Raid. In this case the EDF come to you and you must defend the Red Faction building and any other fighters. Next there’s Destruction, this is not the official name, as it doesn’t have one. This action requires you to destroy EDF targets; these can be monuments or buildings. There are two different ranks for the structures, Medium and High. Each target will reduce the amount of Morale/control that the EDF have in that area. The medium ranked targets are worth between 10 and 16 control points and the high ranked targets are worth between 60 and 80 control points. The destruction of these structures will also provide you with salvage, which is the main currency with in the Red Faction. Next we have Retrieval, this is where you drive a vehicle to Sam (who is the mechanic for the Red faction, she has a history but I’ll let you find that out for yourselves), with in a certain time limit. Once you finish this action you will be rewarded with salvage which, in turn, will let you buy new weapons or upgrade old ones. Next we have Demolition, this is a time limited action, and where you are given limited ammo and weapons, and these can be anything from mines to a walker. If you successfully you will be rewarded with salvage. There are easier ways of gaining ore/salvage that do not require you to go through actions or missions. Ore/salvage can be mined from black crystals that are lying by the roadside, these can be cracked open with one swift swing of your hammer, although the ore is red in colour and can land anywhere once the black crystal has been cracked open. For salvage the main way to get it easily is by destroying EDF propaganda. These come in the form of signs and billboards, they’re easily taken down with a jeep, rocket, mine or hammer, but remember each can only be destroyed once, so once it’s gone, it’s gone. There can be little random mission which can appear at any time during game play, these are messenger and trade route. Messenger is when you follow a messenger who has a list of names of Red Faction supporters/activists. You must hunt the messenger and kill him before he gives the names over to the EDF and return them to the nearest safehouse. This will lower the overall control that the EDF has in the area. Trade route is when you ambush a trade route and bring a specific vehicle to a safehouse, which can be anything from a tank to a fuel carrier. If successfully finished the Morale of the Red Faction will increase and the Control of the EDF will decrease. Finally in each level you have between 3 and 5 missions, each area is different depending on the amount of destruction to be caused and how difficult the last mission will be. All missions in one area at a time, leading up to the final one can be done at any time. The difficulty can be very hard depending on the mission so don’t feel bad about turning down the difficulty. The final mission can only be done once the overall EDF control in that are has reached 0. The final missions can be hard and they can reduce the amount of Morale that the Red Faction have in the area. So beware of where you throw those mines and rockets.Now that let’s go on to a few of the things that I liked most about the game:

• You can go through the entire game and have levelled every simple piece of building that there is to be found in the game

• Nothing pleases me more than hopping over a high wall using my jet past and landing on top of an EDF soldier with my lovely and also very heavy sledgehammer. Also I would like to point out there is a second sledgehammer which can take out the entire side of a building if you hit the right spot, which is everywhere.

• Nothing comes back twice once a building is gone it’s gone, there’s no regeneration with the buildings

• When these buildings fall they really fall, if there 5 EDF soldiers inside the building and it falls it’ll kill them and most of the surrounding people, also when a building falls it can do damage to other buildings. This helps quite a lot when there are multiple targets with in a small area.

• The weapons are the next big thing in this game; there are about 13 different weapons that are at your disposal. These can range from a simple pistol all the way up to a mini nuke (for those who have played fallout 3, it does ten times the damage). In between these you have your mines (remote and proximity), three different kinds of rifle, a shotgun, the archwelder (which shoots electricity and fries your enemies), the grinder (which shoots out spinning, jagged, exploding disks), then there’s the rocket launcher which comes with all the basic upgrades that you would find in most shooter ups, the multi-rocket, and the heat-seeking rockets. Then there’s the reconstruction gun which can build any building in the area. Finally there’s the nanorifle, this baby shoot nanites, which are tiny little robots only a few atoms across which basically dissolve all that they are shot at, including people, whole buildings and cars. This is one rifle not to be messed with.

• The next thing that I suppose I should talk about is the transport. There are really only three different types of transport that you can use. There’s the car, jeep and HGV. There are really only two variations on them. There’s the EDF version then there’s the civilian/ Red faction version, which comes in either red, blue or yellow. In my opinion the HGV and car are a waste of times to be driving in. Sure the car may provide you with speed, but it has no protection. Sure the HGV may provide you with protection but when it comes to hills or a corner (which there are a heck of a lot of) they’ll go round and up them like a drunk camel. That’s not to say that the jeep doesn’t have its downsides either. The jeep can be slow at times to pick up speed but once it does there is plenty of it. Also since it is a medium class vehicle it can take quite a punch, at least three tank shots before it explodes. Although another downside is that it can be launched into the air very easily, for example I once used a car as a launch pad to gain access to my safehouse, that’s just how easy it is to be thrown into the air. There is a forth type of vehicle but these can be rarely found throughout the game they mostly appear in missions or demolition actions, this class is of course the Walker class. There are three different types of Walker, there’s the Heavy Walker, which is basically a walking dump truck as it can destroy anything that it walks into. Secondly we have the Light Walker, which substitute’s power for speed this is some what similar to the Walker at the end of the Aliens series as it has the pincers and is nearly exactly the same shape. This Walker however comes equipped with a jetpack which allows for speedy get aways to higher ground, this can demolish a lot of buildings but it will take more time than the Heavy Walker would. Finally there’s the Missile Walker, as you can guess, it shoots missiles, this is much the same as the Light Walker as it has the same speed and agility but it does not have the jetpack anymore, instead it has the fire power of the missile launcher. This is a happy medium between the two main Walkers although, this is the hardest to find of all of the Walker class.